IT TAKES A PILLAGE

Opening this weekend...

The Northman--The hero of this historical epic is Amleth, a 9th-Century Nordic prince whose father is murdered by his brother, who then marries Amleth's mother. Amleth flees, vowing revenge. When he's all grown up into the strapping Alexander Skarsgård and enjoying a nice career as a raiding, ravaging berserker, he travels to Iceland, poses as a slave on the estate of his Uncle (Claes Bang)--who's still married to Amleth's seemingly contented Mom (Nicole Kidman)--and waits for the chance to avenge his Dad.

Wait, haven't we heard this story somewhere?

Yeah, sort of. The Amleth legend, as recorded in the Gesta Danorum of Saxo Grammaticus in the 12th Century, is the root that, greatly refined by time and civilization, ultimately grew into Shakespeare's Hamlet. But director Robert Eggers, who wrote the script with the Icelandic poet and novelist known as Sjön, prefers to take the story of fratricide punished back to the raw source material.

This is, on the whole, a serious attempt at a historically and mythically accurate depiction of the Middle Ages. That's not to say that it's always an accurate depiction of daily reality in those times, but the movie tries to be true to the era's imaginative and moral sensibilities. As such, it's a seriously harsh, bloody, gory, nasty tale. It offers us almost no quarter, and asks none of us.

For that, it has to be respected. Not many big-budget period movies are this unwilling to throw a sop to modern attitudes. These characters aren't just 21st-century people dressed in Viking drag; when, say, helpless peasants (including children) are locked in a hall that's set on fire after a battle, Amleth isn't the perpetrator, but he doesn't stop it, or object to it, or even seem to notice it. It's just another day at the barbarian office.

The acting is strong. Skarsgård is capable and appealing as Amleth, Anya Taylor-Joy feels period-authentic as the enslaved woman he comes to love, Kidman has an impressive, almost Shakespearean bearing as the Mom. Ethan Hawke as Amleth's Dad and Willem Dafoe as a lippy jester are both effective, and Björk has a creepy scene as a prophet. Best of all is Claes Bang, who wisely plays the murdering brother as a sensible, reflective man.

Despite all this creditable work, what with mutilated servants, and the horses with severed heads, and plenty of other atrocities, the list of people who will prefer to take a pass on The Northman is likely to be long. Even on it's own terms, it's a little slow, and a little heavy, although it gathers steam as it goes, and by the time we get to the final showdown--in the midst of a volcanic eruption!--it's entirely engrossing.

The movie also comes across--unintentionally, I think--as a little, well, Aryan. If you aren't in the mood to watch a lot of stripped-down white guys screaming into the camera as they psych themselves up for battle, this may not be the flick for you. This behavior is historically accurate, of course, and again, I don't think for a moment that it was what Eggers and Sjön had in mind, but it's too easy to imagine a bunch of skinheads or Proud Boys watching this movie over and over, and nodding along with the rage.

BULLETS AND BABIES, DELIVERED

Opening this weekend:

The Magnificent Seven—In Rose Creek, some years after the Civil War, poor farmers hire a gunslinging warrant officer to defend them against the mining kingpin who’s trying to run them off. The gunslinger scrapes together six comrades, and they try to prepare the town for the attack of the mining man’s goons.

This variation—it’s only a remake in its broadest outlines—of the 1960 guy-movie classic from John Sturges (itself a reworking of Kurosawa’s 1954 Seven Samurai) has an entirely ersatz atmosphere. It feels like something staged daily for tourists at Old Tucson Studios, except that, like Lawrence Kasdan’s 1984 Silverado, it’s full of big-name actors.

Scene after scene (almost every scene, really) recalls some earlier western. A surprising number, starting from the opening town meeting in the church, bring to mind Blazing Saddles—there’s even a “beans scene,” though it lacks audible flatulence. There are nods to Kurosawa, too, notably a major borrow from Throne of Blood.

None of which is to say that this Magnificent Seven isn’t entertaining from beginning to end. Director Antoine Fuqua evokes the tidy, almost abstracted flavor of the genre at its most allegorically suggestive, and he gets terrific performances from his stars. 

Denzel Washington plays the gunslinger, roughly the equivalent of the Yul Brynner role in the earlier film. Chris Pratt is the wisecracking cardsharp, Ethan Hawke is a desiccated, war-shattered Southern gentleman, Byung-hun Lee is his knife-slinging traveling companion. Manuel Garcia-Rulfo plays a Mexican fugitive, Vincent D’Onofrio is a shaggy tracker, and Martin Sensmeier rounds out the Seven as an outcast Comanche.

Washington is poised and commanding, an authoritative axis around which the other six revolve. It would be easy to miss how quietly skilled he is, because his costars are so flashy—Pratt a likable wiseacre, Hawke shaky and soul-wounded, Garcia-Rulfo bright-eyed and vulpine, Peter Sarsgaard a study in twitchy mannerism as the creepy miner boss.

Lee and Sensmeier are less developed, but both of them are physically impressive. The only truly original characterization, however, is D’Onofrio, his voice croaky from disuse, his manner oddly guileless.

If I had a quibble with the movie—on its own corny terms—it’s that I was disappointed that Washington’s character had an old score to settle with the villain. Part of what was touching about the 1960 version is that Brynner and his cronies came to care about the locals, without the need for any backstory.

Storks—Last weekend we had Bridget Jones belatedly expecting a baby; this weekend we have a saga of the avians traditionally in charge of delivering it. Like Arthur Christmas a few years back, this is another animated film that derives its comedy from literalizing a folklore motif—probably, in this case, a cover story to avoid telling kids where babies come from.

The birds have a history in Warner Brothers animation. In the Looney Tunes of the ‘40s and ‘50s, the stork (voiced by Mel Blanc) was a depicted as a bleary-eyed, hiccupping drunk, presumably having been unable to decline offers of cheer from delighted new parents, and the result was mis-delivered babies.

In the new film, from Warner Animation Group, the birds have shifted their delivery operations away from babies to consumer items, a la Amazon.com. The movie follows the quest of an up-and-coming stork, Junior (voiced by Andy Samberg) and Tulip (Katie Crowne), a human who grew up among the storks when she went undelivered to her family, to deliver a baby unintentionally produced at the request of a boy who wants a little brother. It’s a surreptitious delivery, as Junior knows that word of the screw-up would endanger the promotion he’s been promised by the corporate honcho stork (Kelsey Grammer).

Even though the story obeys, through Tulip, the standard animated kidflick trope of the misfit struggling to fit in, the adventures which ensue are quite off-the-wall and hard to summarize. Probably the funniest element of the film is the wolf pack—the Alpha and Beta are hilariously voiced by Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele—able to organize itself into bridges and boats even more ambitious structures. As she flees, Tulip notes that she never saw this behavior in the nature shows.

Storks is so stuffed with peculiar ideas that some of them inevitably misfire. There’s a sense of equating babies with consumer products and procreation with acquisition that feels a little unsavory, even though it’s probably unintentional. But overall this is one of the more unpredictable and funnier animated features in awhile.

There’s a Lego short subject before the movie, by the way, a martial arts spoof called The Master in which the title character (voiced by Jackie Chan) clashes with a chicken. It’s good for a chuckle.

PURGING ON INSANITY

The new dystopian thriller The Purge made me think of a MAD Magazine cartoon from the early ‘70s by George Woodbridge. Get-It-Out-Of-Your-System Land depicted an amusement park devoted to venting antisocial behavior—attractions included “Deface a Masterpiece,” “Vandal’s China Shop,” “Looter’s Lane,” “Shoplifter’s Paradise,” “Den of Depravity” and, of course, “Belt the Boss” (“Unload That Urge”). I’ve never been sure that such a park wouldn’t be profitable.

Written and directed by James DeMonaco, The Purge suggests a hardcore approach to the same idea: Get-It-Out-Of-Your-System Day. The film is set less than a decade in the future, with the U.S. under a reactionary and apparently theocratic government. “Our New Founding Fathers” have established an annual twelve-hour period of sanctioned anarchy: Any crime, including murder, is legal, and no emergency services are available. Supposedly this vile license provides a catharsis that stabilizes society, and has lowered the crime rate and improved the economy. So every year, ordinary folks run wild in the streets assaulting each other, while the suburban affluent party, or hunker down with their families, behind fortress-like security systems.

James (Ethan Hawke) has become wealthy selling these systems to his gated-community neighbors. He’s planning a quiet Purge Night in with his family: beautiful, reserved wife Mary (Lena Heady), lovely teenage daughter Zoey (Adelaide Kane), of whose boyfriend James doesn’t approve, and weird but goodhearted adolescent son Charlie (Max Burkolder), who’s a secretive tech whiz.

All, it need hardly be said, does not go smoothly. Charlie sees a homeless black man (Edwin Hodge), wounded, outside the house on the security camera, pleading for shelter from approaching attackers. Before his parents can object, he opens the metal shutters long enough for the man to run inside.

Soon after, the man’s pursuers, a group of masked blueblood kids who were hunting him Most Dangerous Game-style, surround the house, demand their quarry be returned to them alive, and observe that they’ll soon be joined by trucks with the necessary horsepower to pry the place open. From here, The Purge gradually descends into a more or less standard grindhouse-style siege thriller, with elements of the original Night of the Living Dead, Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13, Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs, and—maybe—the mostly forgotten 1971 sleazo shocker The Night God Screamed.

After the screening of The Purge I heard many of my fellow audience members vigorously poking holes in its logic. While I’m not as sure as they are that the overall concept is utterly implausible, in the form it takes here it does, admittedly, seem pretty dubious. But I found I didn’t care while watching it—because of its direct attention to class (unless I missed it, race is never mentioned, not even the homeless man’s), the movie has a nasty, unsavory tension that got to me, especially early on, before it turns to routine stalk-shock.

The acting ensemble is up to the requirements of the material. Hawke is believable, Heady manages some moving moments, and, toward the end, some grimly funny moments as well, and the kids are both sweet. But the standout in the cast was Australian actor Rhys Wakefield, billed simply as “Polite Stranger”—the sadistic Richie Rich who leads the besiegers. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a movie villain this loathsome, one I wanted to see defeated and tortured as badly as this twisted One-Percenter.

But this response on my part is, of course, an irony at the movie’s core. At one point, when the family has their would-be murderers at gunpoint, the audience, with Pavlovian predictability, called out “Come on! Kill ‘em!” The societal function served in this movie by Purge Night is partly served, in our society, by movies like The Purge. Let’s hope it stays that way.